Power Cable for Uniti Nova and Wilson Audio

The issue for me is whether the OP wishes to keep the Nova. If so, there will always be the issue of a £4K all in one driving a £16k pair of speakers. Adding all the power supplies, mains leads and speaker cables in the world won’t change that, and they won’t turn the Uno into the Ferrari. All they will do is suck money that could be far better user used on getting better electronics in the first place. 

I’d suggest that focusing on power figures is unhelpful - this is more about quality than quantity. Of course the Nova will get noise out of the speakers. It just won’t be very high quality  noise. 

The other thing I find interesting is Tidal. Every time I’ve tried it, it has sounded pretty poor, and way worse than locally streamed rips. High definition music is at a higher level again. It seems a total waste of such high quality speakers to drive them with a Nova and feed the Nova with Tidal, which only exacerbates the issue. 

It’s always tempting to get a pair of originally very expensive speakers at a much reduced used price, and then trying to drive them with cheaper electronics that match the speakers’ used price. There have been lots of posts on here over the years by people who have done this and been very disappointed. They then either sell the speakers or spend a lot of money on copacetic electronics. 

In this case I would decide on which to keep - the Nova or the Sophias. Then find a partner to match the one that is retained. 

It would also be well worth spending time at the dealer listening to a really good source playing CD or high res music. A well sorted system with a great source and amplification that really drives the speakers is a wonderful thing. Inadequate electronics struggling with big demanding speakers is just not the same. 

Don’t start on the track of spending money - especially on expensive wires - without researching, with the dealer, where you want to end up. 

I am reminded of a Naim-Wilson thread from a few years ago:

Wilson Sophia 1

Wilson demonstrated how easy the Sophia was to drive by using something called a Naim Nait.  There is even a post by a certain Mr Richard Dane of this parish in the thread that could be especially relevant.  The Sophia speakers have always been engineered to be an easy load for an amplifier, so Mullet systems are far from unusual with Sophias.

Conventional wisdom would suggest something like a Naim 252/300DR would be a sensible match for the Sophias.  I had great results with a 32.5/Hicap2/135 & Sophia 2 combination, the bottleneck being the 32.5 pre-amp.  

However, the Sophia is a true, high performance and very revealing speaker, so set-up is critical.  A decent mains feed   and cm perfect positioning both need to be right to reveal the true abilities.

Hope this helps, FT

Apart from a complete mismatch wrt speaker & amp it also seems a waste of Nova's capabilities "...... We only listen to streaming music, specifically Tidal"   

I also find it hard to believe that the power cable is the primary cause of the lack of ‘life’ in the system. Is your listening room heavily damped (heavy carpet, lots of soft furnishings, wall hangings etc)? If so then that may not be helping - but regardless, some playing about with speaker and listening positions may be worthwhile.

Meanwhile I came across this statement The Sophia’s crossover allows a certain amount of fine-tuning through user-changeable resistors to help get the Sophia 3’s sonic balance just right in the listening room. (What hifi review.) Maybe this is worth looking into.

Just read the thread Nova running in. Seems some other people have experienced a dullness with Nova, and solution was powering it down then back on. Maybe worth a read of that thread if you hevan’t already - though this sounds like an oddity that if commonplace Naim ought to seek to fix.

GTUR

Ask your dealer for some Nordost Reference power and speaker cables.

First get the room positioning of the speakers (and other things in the room) just right.

Second, "fine tune" the Sophias' crossovers to suit the room as IB suggests.

Third, start using locally stored files from a NAS drive (downloaded or ripped from CD)

Fourth, install a NAP250DR to drive the Sophias.

Fifth, start playing around with speaker cables.

Then put the icing on the cake by trying mains cable tweakery.

Finally you'll be in a position to justify all the disruption of a mains supply upgrade.

Somewhere along the line it'll just "come right", it could easily be the first step, it could just as easily be the fifth step.  Only after that should you think there's a fundamental problem.

Starting with the mains is the dealer wasting time and delaying things hoping you'll get used to the sound and then he won't have to take the time to do the first two steps.  He'll probably suggest things in the reverse order I have as that'll be easiest for him.

I have Wilson System V speakers.

I used to drive them with a 250 then a pair of 135s.

They sounded fantastic with each power amp, but better as you moved up the range. They have a low impedance spot at a specific low frequency range which does make them slightly difficult for some amps to drive smoothly. Other Wilson speakers seem to have overcome this issue.

This business of £24k speakers on the end of a £2k power amp being stupid is a load of the proverbial boll*cks ! Some systems work, some don’t. Some people like one thing, others like something else !

Naim and Wilson work well together IMHO of course.

To the OP......work with your dealer to resolve your problem, it will probably be easier to fix that you, your dealer, or any of us imagine.

Hungryhalibut posted:

The other thing I find interesting is Tidal. Every time I’ve tried it, it has sounded pretty poor, and way worse than locally streamed rips. High definition music is at a higher level again. It seems a total waste of such high quality speakers to drive them with a Nova and feed the Nova with Tidal, which only exacerbates the issue. 

 

One of the issues Naim sought to address with the new streaming platform was web streaming performance. The buffering on the new platform is much larger, and there may be other under-the-hood differences that come into play here. So I do think we should be a little careful in extending Tidal sound quality criticisms to the new products, as it's possible that the gap has been closed here. Or maybe not, I don't know. I've had an Atom for a few months now, so I should really do some listening tests myself on Tidal vs the same album streamed locally. I do agree that Tidal streaming sounds worse on the old platform products - perhaps not 'way worse' but that could be subjective! Maybe some Nova owners will try this for themselves and tell us what they think.

The sound quality of a Tidal on my Nova is comparable to a ripped cd as best that I can tell. As mentioned before it’s not always clear if th a Tidal version is exactly the same copy, remastered, production runs, master tape or what copy of the master tape. But in general I have no issue with a Tidal and listen most days. I am on a Virgin 100 mb package.

Same here - there is no difference between Tidal and rips using my Nova. They were very close when I had my "old architecture"  Superuniti but the difference is now undetectable to me. I understand there are possible reasons why a difference might exist and SiS has put forward cogent theories. Also my internet connection is 6-7 mb on a good day and I never have dropouts on Tidal - just lucky I guess 

GTUR, not that I have direct experience with your kit but as other mentioned, work with the positioning and leveling the speakers!

Your dealer mention a dedicated ac line, if this is an big issue I guess most other things might be marginal. Have you tried turning off and unplugging as much equipment as possible on the same line as your nova? 

Regarding cables I would only treat any advice you get here or elsewhere as info to narrow down your own experimentation, only you will be able to judge the effects in your system. Personally I would start looking at what Naim has to offer i.e. power lines and super lumina speaker cables, my guess is that speaker cables will have bigger impact. I would go as far as if careful setup, assuring you have decent ac and a loan Super Lumina speaker cable does not solve your issue you better start looking at other speakers...

good luck!

gtur posted:

Hello,

I am a newbie in more ways than one.

Just cashed in all my chips and got wife's permission for Uniti Nova (she wanted simplicity) and Wilson Audio Sophia 3 speakers. Did a demo at home, with spectacular bass. However the sound was very subdued, even with the NAC A5 speaker cables. The dealer recommended upgrading the power cable and having a dedicated AC line as next steps.

In that regard, would you have a recommendation between Naim Power Line (difficult to get *used* in the USA), PS Audio AC-12, Shunyata Research Alpha Digital, Analog or HC for the best option to open up the sound?

Many thanks!

Hey Gtur, we are 5 members who tell you that Sophia and nova will not work properly. Two members think that Sophia are easy to run, but had not heard really nova/ sophia combo.

The best thing to do, before investing in cables, is to try to connect a nap 250 to your nova and see what will be.  Or nap 200, 300 if the dealer has them in the shop.  If it doesn’t change strongly the sound, then you will try some cables after.   

Update: Went to check out Wilson Audio Yvette (86db efficiency with 50W minimum recommendation) pair with Nova at the Definitive Audio dealer in Bellevue, Washington. It was great, and close to what I had experienced at home. The Sophia's are 87db at 25W recommendation for comparison, with brighter Focal inverted titanium tweeters. He had Wave Transparent speaker cables connected, because that was the one that happened to have bananas on one side and spades on another at hand.

I had picked up a silly "prime" song selection really for my at-home demo. Jurassic Park Theme Song by John Williams. Perhaps I was thinking/hoping T-Rex would walk out of the speakers? A better song for demo was a good friend's choice of Black Magic Woman by Santana. The demo list from the Naim dealer was spectacular. I think I need to re-orient my music choices to Connon's 

Bryce from Definitive - very patient and helpful - then switched back to his previous setup, which of course sounded *amazing* but not toooo much better than the Novas to my untrained ears. The different between a great thwack of the drum sticks and the perfect one: a tower of superlative mostly Audio Research components where the speaker cables (Transparent Reference) alone cost more than my mortgage payment. The Limm streamer, the leanest of those things, was $25k. Fine. I don't need the perfect thwack, and we don't need a T-Rex walking about in our living room. 

Bryce did say, he doesn't expect the Novas to do too well with wattage spikes at more than Nova volume level 68-70. For example, the D'Augustino amp behind us was 300W RMS, but was engineered to take in spikes up to 900W. And he identified that a critical difference between Nova 80W amp and the 250DR 80W amp was a dedicated power supply for the latter, whereas the former shares the circuitry with other parts of the All-in-One. The 250DR had apparently inherited some benefits from Statement, but he wasn't sure if Nova amp had as well.

I live just above the Fauntleroy Ferry Dock.. you should drop by for a listen sometime.  See my profile for contact info.  

       Naim and Wilson can indeed work very well together.     In particular, the Sophia 3's are not as critical of partnering equipment as some of the higher end Wilson's, but will certainly not gloss over any shortcomings in the system.     Shortcuts leads to shortcomings in system building.   I would respectively suggest that an over reliance on Tidal is just such a shortcut.    If you can borrow a good CD player, they often sound considerably better than streaming sources in my experience unless extreme care is taken with network based audio components.   Even running a digital output from a DVD player into the Nova's DAC section will often outperform streaming for CD material, although this may not be as good sounding as a Naim CD player.   Perhaps you can try this sort of arrangement easily at home?

       Other potential shortcuts that can inhibit a system's performance include using consumer grade networking equipment, ignoring speaker set up down to the smallest details, and ignoring room acoustics.     Yes, getting a dedicated AC power circuit for your audio can be a very good idea, but it tends to be applicable only when you own your home and know where your equipment location should be for the long term.    Power cords can help, certainly, and have the benefit of being relatively easy to hear on on a trial basis in your system, but are rarely as fundamental as either getting a dedicated circuit or using an audio grade power conditioner or power distribution center.    At a bare minimum, please plug your Uniti Nova directly into a wall socket and avoid the use of any inexpensive power strip with fuses or claims of power conditioning or surge suppression.     The only devices which include these functions which are audio grade are probably more expensive than the Nova, so I would not think it logical to start there.

        It sounds like you have one or more good local dealers.    Use them to help you insure that you can avoid expensive mistakes in the future.  

       The power specifications of the Naim amps should not give you pause per se.    Yes, some listeners prefer highly powerful amps such as some of the best American high end electronics companies offer (D'Agostino, Spectral, ARC, VTL, etc.) but that does not mean that all listeners do.   Naim fans often prefer Naim amplification to all comers.    Put in more time in your dealer's showrooms so you can better educate yourself about which style of sound you prefer.

        Good luck,

        Bruce

GTUR i would offer the following route forward

:1. throw away the spec sheets and the data obsession

2. ,sell the “expensive” speakers that you bought “cheap” , 

3. Set yourself a realistic budget that you feel comfortable with 

4 Recognise that your wife has a requirement for simplicity and ease which needs to be met 

5. Get yourself a dealer who will happily work with the above . I can highly recommend Hawthorne Stereo in the University District 

Hope this helps 

GTUR

You haven't told us the full story yet.

We know you have a Nova, Wilson Benesch Sophias and the standard power cable, but...

What speaker cable?
How big is the room (L/W/H)?
Where are the speakers in the room?
What are the walls / floor / ceiling made of?
Were are the doors / windows?
What furnishings are in the room and where are they placed?

ALL these have a significant effect on the sound of the room - this is just the start to getting the setup right.

How are these different from the demos you heard?

And totally ignore the spec sheets - you don't yet have enough experience to accurately interpret what they're actually telling you.  Getting a sound system to work well in a specific room is MUCH more complex than the number of watts an amp can push into an 8 ohm resistor at 1kHz.

Clearly something is different between the demo environment in the dealers room and what you are doing at home - we need to be clear on what this is BEFORE we start jumping to conclusions about fixing it.

GTUR, not sure this was already spotted/mentioned already. You say you bought the speakers used. And the demo you do at the dealers is with Sabrinas, not your speakers. You cannot rule out some issue with the speakers per se, especially if you seem to have high frequencies issue.

My dealer carries both Wilson and Naim and I am very familiar with how Wilsons sound. And apart from the 2.5 Ohm dip at low frequencies with inverted phase they are not difficult to drive. As your problems are not in the low frequency domain I would first check the speakers (midrange and tweeter)

Everything about the room is correct but one way to know where to focus would be to take the speakers with you at the dealers. Then you will know if it is a speaker problem or a room acoustics etc problem. Not easy to do but worth it nevertheless. 

DrPo posted:

GTUR, not sure this was already spotted/mentioned already. You say you bought the speakers used. And the demo you do at the dealers is with Sabrinas, not your speakers. You cannot rule out some issue with the speakers per se, especially if you seem to have high frequencies issue.

My dealer carries both Wilson and Naim and I am very familiar with how Wilsons sound. And apart from the 2.5 Ohm dip at low frequencies with inverted phase they are not difficult to drive. As your problems are not in the low frequency domain I would first check the speakers (midrange and tweeter)

Everything about the room is correct but one way to know where to focus would be to take the speakers with you at the dealers. Then you will know if it is a speaker problem or a room acoustics etc problem. Not easy to do but worth it nevertheless. 

 

Hi DrPo,

Good spot!

Another way to asses defective drive units...

GTUR,

Get hold of a calibrated microphone such as a miniDSP UMIK-1 (no, an iPhone won't do), a USB to optical converter, and optical fibre, a laptop and a copy of REW.  Connect it to the optical digital in of the Nova and actually measure the response of the speakers and room.

Post the results on here (I'll tell you which graphs I need).

I can identify blown (or badly misbehaving) drive units (do each channel separately).
I can also identify most (but not all  ) room issues, including, but not limited to:
    issues from 1st reflection
    fundamental room resonance
    unbalanced damping of different frequencies
    comb filter (destructive interference) effects

Hi Huge, you may have to teach us how to interpret those results (have myself downloaded REW some time ago but never got to really use it!)

DrPo posted:

Hi Huge, you may have to teach us how to interpret those results (have myself downloaded REW some time ago but never got to really use it!)

Hi, DrPo,

By all means run the test, and post the waterfall plot, and I'll comment and run you through the interpretation of the other graphs (they're just different analyses/views of the same fundamental data, so you don't need to run the data collection again for each analysis).  I can't guarantee that I'm the best authority on this analysis - I'm self taught in respect of acoustics, but I do have a good grounding in the fundamentals of signal analysis.

I suggest posting the results in a new topic in the 'Padded Cell'.  This is an über geek type subject (as is actually putting the umlaut over the u!).

Another update:

From Jerron at Wilson Audio:

"We have used the Naim Supernait a while ago with the same amplifier rating and there were no issues driving the Sophia 3 with it, I believe you will have a very nice combination."

[@mention:36201736971392588]

The room is 20 ft x 30 ft, split into two levels, one being 18" higher then the other. 5 ft tall windows along the entire one side and the facing side. The speakers are on the lower level in one corner, 4 ft from back wall, with one speaker 2 feet from the window wall. Wood floor. Ceiling is 12-18 ft, apex in the middle of the room. A thick carpet in the middle of the room with lots of leather furniture in an arc facing the speakers. No curtains. Speaker wire is 15 ft of used NAC A5.

@bdnyc

I'll give Nova some time to settle in, plug it directly into the wall. If a wiser music selection doesn't come out well, I'll try the direct AC line next. Bryce at Definitive Audio wasn't sure if they would service Wilson Audio speakers they didn't sell. He'll get back to me next week.

Unfortunately CD listening is just not our style. We're graduating from Pandora to lossless Tidal.

[@mention:11844235607510725]

Hawthorne is an excellent place, and according to my friend, run by genuine, helpful audiophiles. However, the Sophias are a lifetime investment for me, so I need to work with it.

[@mention:32963504873841469] [@mention:36201736971392588] Will follow up on your suggestions once I've had the Novas break in for a few weeks, if the problem persists.

[@mention:1566878603865114] Just emailed you, neighbor!

it is like having a porsche with a fiat 500 motor:  you will be able to drive but not discover what the porsche can do.  Perhaps later....

For now i agree, it is a nice visually combo.

French Rooster posted:

it is like having a porsche with a fiat 500 motor:  you will be able to drive but not discover what the porsche can do.  Perhaps later....

For now i agree, it is a nice visually combo.

 

 

That seems a harsh assessment - and I’m not sure that the OP’s complaint quite fits.